


(take a picture) It'll Last Longer

by playfullips (dessertmeltdown)



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 12:12:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dessertmeltdown/pseuds/playfullips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jon is outed, pete thinks he's hilarious and jon and brendon have some angst.  Coda to Baby We Did This (Don't Miss It).</p>
            </blockquote>





	(take a picture) It'll Last Longer

Jon stumbles into the apartment at two in the morning. He's drops his bag next to the door as he walks into the apartment. He thinks about just collapsing onto the couch as he walks past. It's comfortable, and it's better than the cramped bunk that he's been sleeping in for the last couple of months. But he thinks about Brendon sleeping in the big, warm bed alone, and he decides that he can definitely walk the extra however many feet to the bedroom.

Jon goes into the bedroom, undressing and walking to the bed without turing the light on. He crawls into the bed, not getting under the covers and faces the side to look at Brendon. Jon's deciding whether or not to wake Brendon up at nearly two thirty for no reason other than Jon missed him.

Brendon flips over onto his side, kicking the blankets off. Jon is tired enough that he's already starting to drift off. He scoots closer to Brendon, slinging an arm around him and pulling him closer. Brendon hums quietly in his sleep and settles against Jon. Jon smiles, kissing the corner of Brendon's mouth.

"Hey, you awake?" Jon whispers.

"Mm." Jon feels Brendon smile against his mouth. "What are you doing home?"

"Surprising you," Jon says. "Oh, right, and I have a show here tomorrow night."

Brendon laughs quietly. "Oh, damn. I forgot about that. I heard it's sold out or something, too. I guess I'll just have to miss this one."

"The fuck you'll miss it," Jon says, laughing. "I think I can get you in. I've got some pull."  
"Are you trying to impress me?"

"Is it working?" Jon grins.

"Totally," Brendon says. "I'm a huge fan, you know."

Jon laughs. "So I've heard."

"You sound tired," Brendon says.

"Mm," Jon says. "Yeah, kind of. "I missed sleeping in a real bed. Bunks are fucking tiny."

"Oh, I see. You say you came home to surprise me. It was really for the bed."

"You got me, Bren. Sorry." Jon pulls away from Brendon, just enough to create a little bit of space between them. "Well, the bed and the cats."

"Shut up and go to sleep," Brendon says, laughing, and then, "I missed you, too."

Jon kisses Brendon again, softly, and then settles into his pillow. The bed is _really_ awesome.

+

Jon rolls out of bed and Brendon's already gone. He throws on the same clothes he was wearing when he got home the night before and walks into the kitchen. Brendon's sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and scribbling in a note book. He looks up at Jon, smiling and says, "hey, so I didn't know what time you needed to be up, but I figured it was still before noon, so you were okay."

Jon pours himself a cup of coffee and slides into a chair at the kitchen table. "I've got a couple of hours before I have to be at the venue," he says. "What are you doing today?"

"Well, I was going to go to the library for approximately ten hours, but I hear this pretty cool band's playing a show tonight. Plus, the front man is pretty hot."

"Oh really?" Jon says, smirking.

"Yeah, they're opening for this really popular band that you've probably heard of, seeing as you're in it," Brendon says, nonchalantly. He doesn't look up from his notebook, but Jon can see the hint of a smile playing at his lips.

"Fuck you," Jon says, laughing.

Brendon looks up from his notebook and grins. "Yeah, so I guess I'm going to this concert or something. It could be fun."

"Jackass. You love my band. If you try to deny it, I'm going to call Ryan and ask him _how much_ you love my band."

"Fuck you."

"Hm, well, we do have time."

Brendon laughs loudly, but he still closes his notebook.

+

"Well, look who it is," Nick says as Jon walks into their dressing room, Brendon following behind. "Tom and I had a bet going that you would barely make it in time for soundcheck. Fuck you for proving me wrong."

"You actually bet in my favor?" Jon asks. "Wow, Scimeca, you're dumber than I thought."

Tom laughs. "Told you, Nick. Now, pay up."

"Don't spend it all on cheap booze," Nick mumbles, pulling a twenty out of his wallet.

Tom waves the twenty in Nick's face before putting it in his pocket. "Oh shit," he says. "I need to call Danielle and make sure she's still coming tonight." He pushes past Jon and Brendon to leave the dressing room.

"What's up with him?" Jon asks. Nick just shrugs and mutters something about _woman trouble_. Jon shrugs it off, turning to Brendon. "I guess I have a soundcheck to get ready for. You can just wander around or whatever. Zack knows who you are, so it's not like he's going to chase you off."

+

Jon finds Brendon sitting with one of the opening act after he's done with soundcheck. Brendon's talking excitedly about one of his classes, explaining a song he's been working on. Jon listens for a moment before the bassist nods in his direction and Brendon turns and smiles at him. Brendon walks over, and Jon kisses him quickly on the lips.

"Is that cool?" Brendon asks. Jon shrugs. "I mean, like, people don't know about us or whatever."

"So?" Jon asks. "They're not going to say anything, and I talk about you all the time, anyway. I mean." Jon laughs quietly. "You know."

Brendon laughs at him, and Jon feels very briefly embarrassed. "Anyway, I don't really keep it a secret. It's probably going to be a big deal if the fans ever find out, or whatever, but I don't keep you a secret."

Brendon just nods but doesn't respond. Jon's not sure how to take it, but Brendon grabs his hand and smiles.

+

"So, this really sucks, but I kind of have to leave," Jon says. "Another day, another city. I wish I could stay longer."

"I figured as much," Brendon says. "How much longer is this tour again?"

"Another month," Jon says. "Then the holidays, then Europe." He sighs quietly. "Fucking Europe."

Brendon laughs. "Yes, I'm sure that it pains you to go to _Europe_ and get paid for it."

"Well, okay, it's not that bad, I guess. It'd be better if I could kidnap you and make you come with me. We could make out old, famous buildings."

"Don't think I won't hold you do that someday," Brendon says.

Zack clears his throat behind them and Jon rolls his eyes. "I think he's telling me that the bus is leaving with or without me in one minute if I don't hurry my ass up. I don't want to walk. Or sleep in a band with five other guys."

Brendon nods. "Yeah, see ya."

Jon kisses Brendon quickly and smiles sadly before following Zack to the van. He hates this part. He loves touring most of the time, but leaving fucking sucks.

+

It's a few days later, and it's way too early. He can feel the bus moving over a bumpy road, and his phone is ringing. It's way too fucking loud. Somewhere across the aisle he hears Nick says, "Fucking hell, Jon, turn that shit off."

Jon feels around for his phone and answers it before Nick can wake up too. "Hello?"

"Jon if it's your fucking boyfriend and you two have phone sex I'm killing you in your fucking sleep," Tom says.

Jon hears tinny laughter on the other end of the phone line. It's distinct, and Jon knows right away who it is. "Pete, it's fucking early. You'd better have a good reason for calling."

"Dude, have you been online today?" Pete sounds like he's on the verge of cackling. It's bothersome.

"It's like six in the morning. So no. Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"I've been up for hours," Pete says. "Anyway, you should go look at Livejournal. This is fucking insane."

"Why would I want to look at Livejournal, Pete?" Jon knows that it exists, and he gets it, but he only looks when he gets really bored.

"Because you're all fucking over it. Dude, you made fucking, ONTD."

"What the fuck is ONTD?" Jon asks.

"It's a gossip community. For _celebrities_."

Jon shifts so that he's sitting up, as much as he can without hitting his head on the top bunk. "What? What the fuck, Pete? What are you talking about?"

"I don't know, man. Some fan got some pretty clear camera phone pictures of you and Brendon from the other night. Fucking jealous, dude. I can't get pictures like that on my phone. Anyway, it's being called 'Emo's Gay Scandal' all over the fucking internet."

" _What_?" Jon says. "Pete, tell me that you're joking."

"Dude, it's not a big deal. It's just something for them to talk about. Anyway, the picture's pretty hot."

"Shut the fuck up, Pete." Jon feels a headache coming on, and he thinks he should probably call Brendon at some point and warn him that Ryan and Spencer are probably going to see these and tease the shit out of him for it. Jon's not famous enough for this shit.

"Just get out your laptop and look, man. I'm sure you'll feel better." Pete laughs again, and Jon sort of wishes he could jump through the phone and hit Pete with it.

"Yeah, whatever." He hangs up the phone and rolls out of bed, carrying his phone and his laptop with him to the lounge.

He dials Brendon before he looks at anything and waits for an answer. It's barely six in the morning, and if Brendon's awake, he's awake for class, but Jon probably should tell him about this.

"Hello?" Brendon answers the phone with a rough, sleepy voice. "Ryan, if you're still fighting with Spencer, I swear, I'm not fucking helping you until it's at least daylight."

"Hey, it's me," Jon says. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up."

"Oh, Jon." Brendon sounds more awake than he did a few seconds ago. "What the fuck? Shouldn't you be sleeping off last night?"

"Yeah, Pete just called me," Jon says. "So, hey, have you heard of this Livejournal thing, ONTD, or something? Pete was, like, salivating over it."

"What? Why?"

"Apparently I'm on it. Well, us. We're on it." Jon takes a breath. There's a long pause on the other end, but he hears some shuffling and imagines Brendon getting out of bed and going to his computer. Neither one of them says anything for a long time. He's scrolling through pages of crap on Livejournal until he finds a link to the page. "Brendon."

"Fuck," Brendon says. "Holy shit. What the hell?"

"I know." Jon frowns. It's a fuzzy picture, but it's obvious that it's him. Brendon's face isn't visible, but there are a bunch of pictures of them together at various shows backstage, harmless pictures where Brendon just happened to end up in the shot because he was _there_. Some girl with a camera phone had seen them kissing by the busses and thought it was a great idea to post the picture on the internet. Most of the comments say things like _lol who is that_ or _y do we care?_ But there are a few from fans, either saying they knew it or whatever, Jon's band is still great. There are some nasty comments too, but Jon tries to scroll through them. He's still sort of stuck on the fact that he's actually on some fucking gossip page just because of Brendon.

"Jon?" It takes Jon a second to even remember he was on the phone, and that Brendon's been talking for a while. "Like, fuck, seriously. What?"

"I don't know. What the fuck?"

"You said it wasn't a big deal," Brendon says. He sounds quiet, a little sad. "You don't keep me a secret."

"This is different, Brendon." Jon can't think of a reason why it's different, but he knows that it is. This is so beyond different from Tom and Nick and little unknown opening bands knowing about him and Brendon. This is going to make _everything_ different, and he doesn't know how things will be different. But he knows they'll be different.

"Yeah," Brendon says. "Yeah, I know." He sounds wrecked, and Jon knows there's nothing he can do about it, not from a bus in who knows fucking where on a cell phone.

"Brendon."

"No, seriously. Whatever, I get it. I'll just." Brendon doesn't wait for Jon to say anything else before the line goes dead. Jon feels like shit, and he knows he just made Brendon feel like he was nothing. He slams his laptop shut and briefly entertains the idea of throwing it against the wall and watching it shatter into pieces.

He goes back to bed instead.

+

When Jon wakes up he has so many texts that his inbox is full. He deletes them all without looking. There are voicemails from his brothers, from Sean, from Cassie and from Patrick. He doesn't listen to any of them. There's nothing from Brendon. Not that Jon blames him for that. He is going to toss his phone down on the bed when it starts ringing. It's not Brendon, but it's close.

"Hey Ryan," Jon says. He knows he's either going to get some fucked up, half-assed pep talk or he's about to get berated. Neither one sounds appealing, but maybe he can find out how upset Brendon is with him right now.

"You're an asshole," Ryan says.

"I know." Jon sighs. "Is he okay?"

"Well, his boyfriend basically just told him that he'd be better off ignoring his existence. Should he be okay?"

"That's not what I said," Jon says, pathetically.

"No, you didn't have to," Ryan says. The thing about Ryan is, he's not Brendon's best friend. That's mostly Spencer's job. Ryan and Brendon fight a lot about stupid shit, and Ryan can be a dickhead, but he also loves Brendon almost as much as Spencer does, and Jon knows that. "He's a little wrecked."

"I'm sorry," Jon mumbles. It's to the wrong person, but it seems necessary anyway. "I was a little shocked, that's all." Jon isn't sure that's totally true, but it seems like something to say.

"Yeah," Ryan says. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Honestly? I didn't even think I was famous enough for this shit. And I'm sure, like, tomorrow, Angelina will adopt another baby or Jennifer Aniston will go out with another young, hot actor and no one will even be thinking about this shit, but wow."

"Are you ashamed that you're fucking him? Because that's fucking stupid, and I'll kick your ass," Ryan says. Jon almost laughs at the idea of Ryan kicking anyone's ass, but he sounds serious.

"I'm not. Everyone who matters already knew, it's just." Jon sighs. "No, I don't want to talk about this with you. Do you think he'd answer the phone if I called him?"

"Maybe. It wouldn't hurt to try."

Jon's not sure that's true, so he decides to give it a while before he tries.

+

Meet and Greet is fucking weird that day. There are people whispering even more than usual, and Zack kicks two people out before they get up to the table. Jon doesn't know what they were saying, but it must have been bad because Zack had been pissed. Jon's a little worried about how the rest of it's going to go from that point on.

At the very end, one of the last kids is this boy, he can't be older than fifteen or sixteen. He kind of reminds Jon of Brendon, which makes him both sad and amused at the same time. The kid is awkward with Tom and Nick and forces out conversation about how much he loves the band, and when he gets to Jon he stops. Jon slides the CD he brought with him closer to sign, and half way through, the kid says, "I think it's awesome." Jon looks up, surprised and curious. "Like, I don't know, people make fun of me or whatever. I get teased a lot. I think it's awesome that you've got, you know, whatever, and you're not trying to deny it." Jon feels bad because he's not sure that given the option who would have been completely honest about Brendon, and he feels really shitty for that. "Anyway, I think it's cool. Maybe not that someone did that, but it's cool."

Jon doesn't know what to say, so he just nods and gives the kid back his CD case. The kid half smiles as he walks off.

+

The phone rings five times and then goes to voice mail. "Brendon, please, I need to talk to you. I know you're ignoring me. Or maybe you're practicing. Fuck, just answer your god damned phone. I need to talk to you." Something about that kid at the meet and greet had shaken Jon. Tom, Nick, and even Zack have been given Jon weird looks all day, and none of them are talking about what he knows they want to talk about.

He waits a few minutes before dialing Brendon's number again. He leaves the basically the same message but sighs at the end and adds, "I love you. Seriously." He wants to bang his head against a wall.

On the fifth call he says that he's sorry and he's a dick and Brendon still doesn't answer. But the tenth call, it goes straight to voicemail. Jon's getting frustrated, more at himself than Brendon. He knows that he's the one who fucked up but, Jesus. It was six in the morning, and he'd apparently been outed by a fan. He doesn't know what Brendon expected. It's not like Brendon hadn't been shocked too.

Fuck.

Jon goes to dial Brendon's phone again when it beats him by ringing. Fucking Spencer.

"Why the fuck isn't he answering his phone?"

"Maybe because he doesn't want to talk to you," Spencer says. "Stop calling him, Jon." Right now, Jon hates Spencer. He needs to mind his own fucking business.

"I need to talk to him," Jon says. "I'm fucking sorry, okay?"

Spencer sighs. "Jon, he's kind of upset. Just give him a couple of days."

"I don't want to talk to him," Jon hears Brendon say in the background. "I'll fucking call him when I'm ready."

Jon hangs up the phone without another word.

+

It's been three days. Three fucking days. He keeps deleting texts from everyone asking how he is and how he's dealing with it or how Brendon's dealing with it. Pete's called a few times joking about Out magazine, and Jon's just laughing everything off. He doesn't really care anymore. He doesn't care until they have a radio interview and the DJ is an asshole about it.

"So, there's been some scandal in the past week or so," he says. Jon hasn't bothered to learn his name, and now he's really glad for that.

"Well," Nick says, laughing. "We don't really pay attention to that stuff, you know. We're just a few guys who like playing music together. We don't even know why people bother talking about our personal lives."

"But this is a big deal, you know?" The DJ pushes harder. "There's always been lots of talk about Pete Wentz. Everyone thought he'd be the first with this type of scandal in your crowd."

"It's not a scandal," Jon says.

"Care to elaborate on that?" The DJ asks. Tom and Nick both look at him, wide eyed curiosity and worry and all.

"I said it's not a fucking scandal." Jon's had all of this tension building for days, and he's ready to let it out. He manages to hold back enough that he doesn't call the guy an asshole, though. "Yes, the guy in those pictures is my boyfriend. No, it's no one else's business. That's all I'm going to say about it. It's my private life, and I'd rather leave it private."

"Well, okay then, there you have it!" The DJ seems satisfied with the answer. "Jon Walker's official statement on the matter. Now, guys, let's talk about this new single!"

Jon lets Nick and Tom field the rest of the questions.

+

"So, you'll probably hear later, and I know you're not fucking talking to me, but I kind of told his douchebag DJ that you were my boyfriend, so, whatever. I hope you still are because that would fucking suck. Please call me back, Bren." Jon hangs up the phone and closes his eyes. They're in a hotel tonight, and he's really fucking grateful for it. He needs to have a relaxing night in a real bed. It'd be better if it were a real bed with Brendon in it, but that might not happen again any time soon.

He's jolts awake at the sound of his phone ringing. He looks at the display and sees Brendon's name. He's almost too nervous to answer, afraid of what Brendon's going to say.

"Jon," Brendon says, before Jon can say a word.

"Brendon, Jesus, I'm so sor-"

"I know," Brendon says. "That fucking hurt, Jon. I felt like you were basically telling me that it was fine to date me, as long as no one knew."

"That's not how I meant it," Jon says, pathetically. "I was fucking shocked, Brendon. Do you know what's it like to realize that people actually give a shit about your personal life? I didn't know what to think."

"It was a big deal for me, too. You know fucking people in my music class have been asking me if I'm the guy in those pictures with you? I mean, they don't know your name or what band you're in, but they saw those pictures, and suddenly I'm getting pointed at and stared at when I'm _not_ hanging out with you at one of Sean's shows."

"Fuck, Bren. I didn't know."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Brendon says. "I should have called you sooner. I just, fuck, you hurt me, Jon."

"I know. I was a jackass, and I'm sorry."

"You should be," Brendon says. There's an awkward silence before Brendon talks again. "Anyway, I heard that radio interview. I'm glad you don't see me as some dirty scandal."

"I never did, Bren."

"I was worried for a couple of days there," he says. "I'm still your boyfriend. I mean, I know you said if, and I am."

"Thank fucking God," Jon says. "I don't want to lose you over this shit."

"Nah," Brendon says. "You were dick, but I still kind of love you."

"Good to know," Jon says. He imagines Brendon grinning over the phone somewhere in Chicago.


End file.
